Ontic Explanation Is either Ontic or Explanatory, but Not Both

Wright, Cory; Eck, Dingmar van

doi:10.3998/ergo.12405314.0005.038

Cited by 7 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…In fact, he mainly situated his philosophical focus on explanation against C. Hempel's account. For Salmon the "two grand traditions of scientific explanation" (Salmon, 1989, pp.68-69) are: the EC, characterized by its focus on logic and laws, according to which the act of explanation is to show that a phenomenon fits into a nomic nexus (generally identified with Hempel's covering model of explanation); and the OC, characterizing causality and explanation as a causal-mechanical explanation, fitting phenomena into natural patterns and regularities (Salmon, 1984, pp.84-134;1989, pp.320-330;Wright and van Eck, 2018).…”

Section: New Wave Of Ontic and Epistemic Conceptionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In fact, "what our understanding proceeds 'through' are the representations and models of those entities and activities and the ratiocinative procedures thereon-not the activities and entities themselves" (Wright, 2015, p.26). In other words, identifying explanations with the causes themselves is not only not self-evident (Wright and van Eck, 2018), but confusing. The source of such confusion seems to stem from the attempt to sanction the dependence of OC on how the world is (Craver, 2014).…”

Section: New Wave Of Ontic and Epistemic Conceptionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Ontic or epistemic conception of explanation: A misleading distinction?

Oleksowicz

2024

ZFN

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In this paper, I discuss the differences between ontic and epistemic conceptions of scientific explanation, mainly in relation to the so-called new mechanical philosophy. I emphasize that the debate on conceptions of scientific explanation owes much to Salmon’s ontic/epistemic distinction, although much has changed since his formulations. I focus on the interplay between ontic and epistemic norms and constraints in providing mechanistic explanations. My conceptual analysis serves two aims. Firstly, I formulate some suggestions for recognising that both sets of norms and constraints, ontic and epistemic, are necessary for scientific theorising. Secondly, I emphasize that there are multiple dimensions involved in scientific explanation, rather than clear-cut alternatives between ontic and epistemic aspects. I conclude with a general observation that although contextual aspects of explanations are unavoidable, the epistemic-relativity of our categories, explanations and models can in fact be compatible with their objectivity. Instead of making hastily drawn ontological implications from our theories or models, we should carefully scrutinize them from the ontic-epistemic perspective.

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Section: New Wave Of Ontic and Epistemic Conceptionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: New Wave Of Ontic and Epistemic Conceptionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Ontic or epistemic conception of explanation: A misleading distinction?

Oleksowicz

2024

ZFN

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“…In the literature, the current debate between advocates of ontic versus epistemic conceptions of mechanistic explanation revolves around the question of the nature of explanation, i.e., whether explanations are things in the world or representations of them (Craver 2007;Wright 2012Wright , 2015Bokulich 2016;Wright and van Eck 2018). This is a different debate than the one over which explanatory constraints (should) govern judgements about the goodness of mechanistic representations (Illari 2013; van Eck 2015a, b;Sheredos 2016).…”

Section: An Alternative To Ontic Constraint Accounts Of Mechanistic Explanationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mechanist idealisation in systems biology

Eck

Wright

2020

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This paper adds to the philosophical literature on mechanistic explanation by elaborating two related explanatory functions of idealisation in mechanistic models. The first function involves explaining the presence of structural/organizational features of mechanisms by reference to their role as difference-makers for performance requirements. The second involves tracking counterfactual dependency relations between features of mechanisms and features of mechanistic explanandum phenomena. To make these functions salient, we relate our discussion to an exemplar from systems biological research on the mechanism for countering heat shock-the heat shock response (HSR) system-in Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria. This research also reinforces a more general lesson: ontic constraint accounts in the literature on mechanistic explanation provide insufficiently informative normative appraisals of mechanistic models. We close by outlining an alternative view on the explanatory norms governing mechanistic representation.

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“…One suggestion is that many discussions have recently moved in the direction of normative analyses of 'ontic and epistemic constraints' that explanations must satisfy in order to count as good scientific explanations. van Eck (2015;2018;2021) has argued that appealing to ontic constraints just unwittingly concedes the debate between EC and OC. Michał Oleksowicz's 'Ontic or epistemic conception of explanation: A misleading distinction?'…”

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confidence: 99%

The nature and norms of scientific explanation: Some preliminaries

Peña,

Wright

2024

ZFN

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There are at least two deep and related debates about explanation: about its nature and about its norms. The aim of this special issue of Philosophical Problems in Science/Zagadnienia Filozoficzne w Nauce (ZFN) is to survey whether or not a consensus is at hand in these debates and to help settle what it can. The overarching foci are twofold: (i) the nature of scientific explanation, with special attention to the debate between ontic and epistemic conception of explanation, and (ii) the norms of scientific explanation, with special attention to so-called ‘ontic’ (or better, ‘alethic’) norms like truth and referential success and epistemic norms like intelligibility and idealized understanding. It called for advocates of various conceptions to articulate the current state of these debates. Researchers and scholars from around the globe—including Poland, Canada, Korea, The Netherlands, the United States, Greece, Austria, and Belgium—contributed. The special issue also attempts to provide an opening for new work on the norms of explanation, such as truth or model-based accuracy, information compression, abstraction, and generalization.

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Ontic Explanation Is either Ontic or Explanatory, but Not Both

Cited by 7 publications

References 24 publications

Ontic or epistemic conception of explanation: A misleading distinction?

Ontic or epistemic conception of explanation: A misleading distinction?

Mechanist idealisation in systems biology

The nature and norms of scientific explanation: Some preliminaries

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